Monday, August 31, 2009

Cashed in a cool 1.1 Billion ISK of loot tonight and also stocked up on POS Fuel. My system has begun respawning sites again and it looks like I am here to stay a while.

I had a bit of a close call on returning to the W-space system. I had scanned down an exit to LowSec via an adjoining Class 4 from my hub system and on the first trip out I simply dropped the loot at the nearest highsec station. I wanted to cover my refueling trips first before I ran up to Jita as the exit was already nearing closure. By the time I finished my fuel runs and then ran to market with the goods, when I returned to the low-sec entrance to the Class 4, it was in "Critical" mode - felt lucky to get through it before it collapsed.

I still have over 15 sleeper sites left in the system and 11 more sites spawned in the last 48 hours, so looking like it might be prudent to stick around... ;-) Have not even touched the Ladar sites yet.

Nice to see nanoribbons prices up - it accounted for 670M ISK of the total haul.

I even had a pretty decent system before this, but it would not run with EVE's highest graphics settings, especially since I run dual clients.

Now, I can run dual clients, both in EVE's max graphics settings, and everything is as smooth as butter. It is simply incredible to see levels of detail that I had never seen in EVE before. I wish I would have grabbed some better before/after shots - maybe I will, but for now, I sit in awe of what the EVE graphic designers and developers have achieved with this game - almost like EVE is a new game (well, sort of...).

Other than smoother & faster movement, crisper and more graphic detail, performance is absolutely sick and scanning is now something I realize must have consumed a ton of CPU, because scanning now is night and day better/faster compared to my old system.

I have my 70+ sites down to about 30 now. Monstrous amounts of loot. As soon as I clear the remaining Perimeter Hangar sites it will be time for a run to market. In the mean time, I always load all the loot into my cargo bay before I go to my safe spot and logoff...

I have yet to see another pilot in this hub system, so I pretty much feel like I am burning POS fuel for no reason, but I am a firm believer in Murphy's Law - as soon as I decide to offline to save fuel, that would certainly be just when it was needed most.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Not that I am complaining, but I still do not understand the methodology behind how site spawns occur for W-Space. I mean, I understand that sites respawn in other systems once they are completed, but I am talking about the mechanics of how the respawn systems are chosen.

As I posted about previously, I found an absolutely packed Class 2 system and moved in. By the time I next logged in, there were 6 more sites spawned. Hmmmm... Well great! Let's get to work. So I cleared 11 sites. The next time I logged in after downtime, 8 more sites had spawned. Now I have camped out many systems by now and have NEVER seen spawn rates like this.

The sites spawning have mostly been different than those that I am clearing, so it us not like they are simply respawning in the same system, so not sure what to make of it.

Regardless, I am amassing a huge amount of loot and there are more sites here than I could clear in a week of full time piloting. I literally have over 150 NIMs, 50 nanoribbons, and lots of other loot. Will be interesting to see if the sites start despawning before I get to all of them.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Well, I was scanning down the latest exits and lo and behold I discovered the mother load:

23x Perimeter Checkpoint

26x Perimeter Hangar

7x The Ruins of Enclave Cohort 27

5x Radar - Unsecured Perimeter Comms Relay

7x Radar - Unsecured Perimeter Transponder Farm

4 Ladar Sites

3 Grav Sites

The most recent adjoining Class 2 system has no less than 75 sleeper sites and is a "hub" system with static exits to Class 2 and Class 4 systems only. It appears there may have been activity here long ago, as there are some abandoned T2 drones, but this system has been gathering dust...

So, I packed up the POS and all of the gear and moved the POS to the new system. It is a "Red Giant" anomaly system, which means it has 44% bonus to bomb damage, bomb range, and overload bonus. I do not use any of those so not really a benefit.

Next time I move the POS, I am going to consider buying a second one to anchor & online it first. Since you have to offline and un-anchor EVERYTHING before offlining the POS Tower, that means you are shuttling your defensive elements to the new site long before your tower is in place in the new system, which means you do not have an exact warp-to point established yet for the POS. You can either wait until all modules are un-anchored and the POS is un-anchored and transported to the new system (which leaves a lot of expensive modules sitting around a POS Tower with no shield for 30+ minutes), or you bookmark a deep safe spot in the target system and move everything as it gets un-anchored. The latter means you end up moving everything twice - once to the safe spot and then again once the POS is finally anchored and onlined. Either way, you have a lot of stuff out in the open waiting for the POS to get moved, which can be nerve-racking in a system with traffic.

Just had enough time to online the defenses before downtime. Hopefully I can make time this week to start clearing the sleeper sites.

Note that NIMs are now averaging about 600K ISK/each -vs- the 4.5M to 5.5M ISK value 30 days ago. Also note the trading volume increase.

This should free up NIMs as being what was reported as a T3 production bottleneck, and will make Melted Nanoribbons the most valuable drop item for Class 2 & 3 sleeper salvage.

However, the (near-term) balance between supply and demand for NIMs is such that although the NIM sell price is lower, the higher volume of NIM drops is still making up for the price drop. For example, my most recent run to market netted roughly the same three top ISK earners, with NIMs still accounting for the majority of sleeper ISK yield:

Neurovisual Input Matrix (NIM): 157M

Melted Nanoribbons: 136.4M

Sleeper Data Library: 76.5M

This could simply be a matter of demand still outpacing supply in the short term, but time will tell...

In W-Space news, between in-laws in town and traveling (good friend's wedding!) my online time has been limited, but spawn rates continue to be adequate between my POS system and the adjoining recurring Class 2 systems. If anything stands out it is boredom - feeling too much like Null-Sec Ratting operations these days. Now that I know exactly what ships and fitting to bring to Sleeper sites, Class 2 sleepers are no longer a "challenge".

That means I need to seek out tougher action, so I may move my Apeiron base to the next decent looking Class 3 spawn.

If you listen closely and watch his presentation slides, you will see that DUST will play a key role in how planets will eventually be used to define sovereignty in EVE, and most interestingly, that control over a planet will be "contracted out" to DUST players as an objective in the console game. (yes, ISK Transfer between EVE and DUST is implied)

This literally shares all of the corporate and alliance structure over to DUST, essentially enabling an alliance to have both DUST and EVE corporations working jointly for EVE system control. I think this is a pretty advanced concept and it shows just how progressive and broadly the folks at CCP are taking this genre.

It also just simply makes logical sense if you were really into role playing - if you were attempting to establish (EVE) system sovereignty as a corporation, you might have a (DUST) planetside warfare/defense corporate arm to be dispatched to the planet or contract a corporation specializing in planetside warfare and control.

Combine all of this with the continued onslaught of EVE Chronicles (great reading BTW) and you have a true end-to-end story continuing to evolve.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Intermittent time online this weekend, but I did manage to clear a bunch more sites. My system has been spawning 3-5 new frontier sites daily, which in my experience is rare. My typical ritual is to login, scan down all of the prior bookmarks, scan down the new sites and WH exits, then get to work.

I will clear any Frontier/Radar/Mag sites, then time allowing, I will head into the static Class 2 exit to see if there are more sites. Six out of the last seven times the adjoining Class 2 system had multiple sites to run, so I am maintaining an active stream of sleeper loot.

In fact, I did my now-standard run to market and was happy to see that after this latest trip, my entire Medium POS experiment is effectively paid off. I am actually a little over 160M ISK is the proverbial green. I also decided I was going to keep myself planted in this system for a while longer, so I restocked on POS Fuel and now have a little over 4 weeks supply. Having static exits to a Class 2 is good for site running and another static exit to low-sec makes for easy and fast refueling and market runs.

Nobody has challenged the POS to date - in fact I have not seen a soul in the current system since I set up the POS. I suppose the static low-sec exit reduces the casual wormhole prober to a fraction of what you would see from a static high-sec exit.

A quick note on Rokh mining. I stopped mining based on the fact that even when mining Arkanor, the hourly ISK rate is half that of what I am currently yielding running sleeper sites. I am half-way there on skilling up for an Orca, so we will see how it works out with running the Rokh and the Orce fitted with max gang link modules for mining. Looking for feedback on the mining aspects of WH space and what people are using. Anyone want to guest post? If so, evemail me (Star Defender or LightTraveler).

No, I am not switching careers ;-) Just a good reference for anyone looking to better understand mining, with respect to W-space efforts.

[Rokh, Mining Rokh]

Co-Processor II

Mining Laser Upgrade II

Mining Laser Upgrade II

Mining Laser Upgrade II

Expanded Cargohold II

Survey Scanner II

Magnetic Scattering Amplifier II

Heat Dissipation Amplifier II

[empty med slot]

[empty med slot]

[empty med slot]

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Miner II

Capacitor Control Circuit I

Capacitor Control Circuit I

Capacitor Control Circuit I

Hornet II x5

Note the 3x MLU II's - it actually provides a better bonus (1.09^3) versus 4x MLU I (1.05^4). Also, the CCC Rigs are a holdover from rigging the battleship as an actual battleship! Too expensive to swap out, plus nice to have the Cap. Hornets or Medium drones for defenses, but I will be standing by with my Domi if needed...

Logged in after work tonight and cleared 2 Radar and 4 Perimeter sites. All that patience probing for the right system seems to have paid off, because NIM's were getting dropped left and right, for a total of 27 NIM's and 25 Melted Nanoribbons plus all the other assorted loot - Current Jita value for all the loot: 187M ISK. (Updated: Was actually 224M ISK in Jita once I sold it)

My static Low-sec exit was too far to take to market, so I will sit on the goods until the next good exit spawns.

Although I have not yet tried mining, I did manage to take my Rokh out for a quick stroll, and here are some pictures:

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Although I have read the requisite POS guides, etc. I am still a noob when it comes to POS warfare and defenses. I wanted to see for myself how my POS configuration was going to function as a deterrent to "let's take down this POS for Lulz".

The other motive was simply curiosity - I had never seen POS defenses activated.

Based on the configuration I posted previously, I wanted to actually see for myself how well the POS defenses worked in what I will call "ECM-Only" mode. The idea is to minimize fuel consumption by offlining the power-hungry guns, while maintaining a deterrent stance with the ECM. If any attack occurs, I can online the remaining batteries.

So, the first thing I did was to put all ECM batteries online and offline all guns. I then took my trusty Drake outside the shield, locked the POS and fired one missile. Well, needless to say, I was immediately Web Scrambled, Webified, and with 8x ECM's had zero hope of ever locking anything again, at least until I escaped. The funniest thing was that because I was webbed and scrammed, I could not really move. My max speed was 11 m/s with full 10MN afterburner! I had to offline the warp jammers just to escape. Lolz. Talk about being rendered useless. Initial test considered successful.

Ultimately, with the 8x ECM batteries to keep a ship from maintaining a lock, it would be extremely difficult for even a small team to take down the defenses. Seeing that the web disruption and stasis webifiers are really there to pin you down while the wrath of the artillery is unleashed, those can go offline as well. So, just the ECM batteries online for now. If I get an alert about a POS attack, I can online the warp disruptors, then the webifiers, then unleash the pain with the guns...

Question to the more experienced POS folks: Only one thing surprises me - is there no solution out there today for "Outside of EVE" email notification if your POS comes under attack? Obviously you get an EveMail, but preferably I get a text or an email...

New home is a Class 2 found from a low-sec (.3) system, which I am officially naming "Apeiron" (Greek for Unlimited, Boundless).

The good news was that the WH entry for my new home was a mere 2 low-sec jumps from my POS staging station. The other good news was that I only had to dodge pirates twice, both times successfully.

Other than a glitch when I got disconnected 40 minutes prior to the extended downtime while anchoring and onlining some defenses, everything went smoothly and according to plan.

In terms of my new W-space, it has some amazing mining sites and a couple of gas sites, plenty for me to take my first shot at roid mining and gas harvesting.

1x Ladar - Barren Perimeter Reservoir

1x Ladar - Minor Perimeter Reservoir

1x Ladar - Ordinary Perimeter Reservoir

1x Ladar - Sizeable Perimeter Reservoir

3x Grav - Average Frontier Deposit

2x Grav - Common Perimeter Deposit

1x Grav - Ordinary Perimeter Deposit

1x Grav - Uncommon Core Deposit

1x Grav - Unexceptional Frontier Deposit

2x Radar - Unsecured Perimeter Transponder Farm

2x Radar - Unsecured Perimeter Comms Relay

Good Sleeper Site volume to cover, with about 12x Perimeter Sites of various flavors and 4 Radar Sites. There is a static exit to Low-Sec and to Class 2, so obviously not a "hub" system like I wanted, but hey, at this point, beggars can't be choosers...

More to follow once I get back online and start taking down the Sleeper and Radar sites first, then I am going to go for some Gas Harvesting.

Side note: It was made clear that W-Space graphics were to be much higher quality per the Apocrypha release, and I must say that this new system is beautiful - definitely some perfect backdrops for my forthcoming Rokh pics...

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Just some background on what I have been doing and the respective results.

I am in a border region comprised of a mix of high/low sec systems where I have established a route that takes me through 7 Low-Sec (.1 to .4) systems and 9 High-Sec (.5 to .7), 16 total systems in all. I have been jumping online and running this route probing for Class 2 and 3 WH entries for the better part of a week now. After the first 2 "runs", I began keeping a log of what I found, and here are the grand-totals over the last 6 days:

Total systems visited: 132

Total wormhole entries found: 39 (23 Class 2, 11 Class 3, 5 class 4+)

Total occupied WH systems: 33

Total empty (already farmed) systems: 6

Of the above, in 8 cases, I proceeded into the WH system anyways to see if there was a suitable WH system entry within the WH space. I am calling these "Sub-space" entries:

Total "sub-space" entries found and explored: 11

Total occupied sub-space WH systems: 11

I think you can get an idea on why the name of the post topic...

Most of the occupied systems had large, established, single or multiple POS present (mixes of Medium and Large POS), with lots of ships around. I chatted up a few after scanning down some ships running sleeper and mining operations and pretty much all were in relatively established WH corps or at least a significant size group that decided to break off from their normal corp roles to occupy WH space for the last few weeks or months.

It is amazing to me that literally 100% of the 50 W-space systems I explored had significant presence or the system had already been cleaned out (likely via an adjoining WH entrance/exit).

Although this is still a limited sample of the more than 4,000 reported WH systems, just purely from a probability standpoint, it indicates an extremely high population rate. At least with regards to Class 2 and Class 3 WH space.

If there was any "trend" in what I have seen, it is that the most "populated" WH systems (i.e. largest POS buildouts, most pilots, etc.) were found from High-Sec space, which continues to support my theory on Class 2 WH "subclasses" that High-Sec exits in Class 2 space will respawn consistently to HighSec, where other Class 2 systems will consistently respawn exits to low-sec.

As such, I am going to change my route to focus solely on low-sec systems.

Are the days of solo WH occupation a thing of the past? Will large, corporate presence be required to maintain POS bases, even in Class 2 WH space? Time will tell, but all of the early indications are there...

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Although the smart play would be to test out the new Medium Tower POS before loading up the really fun gear, I am feeling flush with all of the ISK in my account and I have a few ships that I have been wanting to test out in W-Space. First off, here is my standard Class 2 package:

Dominix (Repper and Drone DPS)

Drake (Primary DPS)

Cormorant (Salvage)

Helios (Primary probing)

Badger Mark II (Transport)

In addition to the standard ships I typically bring in, a couple of factors are driving me to experiment with some additional ships. First off, I am going to take a shot at some mining (both gas and roids). I have skilled up to level 5 in nearly all of my mining skills and have a Rokh that has been gathering dust for nearly 6 months that is a good choice. I can fit 7 Miner II's and switch to 5 Gas Harvesters on that sucker and have a tank and drone DPS to cover any sleepers that may come calling. Will be nice to see that behemoth put to use.

NOTE: There is something about the Rokh - I think it is one of the coolest looking ships in EVE. Every time I fly it I end up wasting time simply gawking at it from different angles. I literally bought it because I wanted to own one - I have never really used it, until now... Cannot wait until I can post a good screenshot of it in a packed roid site!

The other ship I want to bring in is my old Caldari Navy Raven missioning ship. I have fitted it for Omni-tank and I want to see how it's extra firepower with the Wrath Fury Cruise Missiles makes mincemeat of Sleeper BS's. Again, that ship has been gathering dust for a LONG time, so better to try to get some more action out of it.

Here would be the additions to my hangar:

Rokh (Gas and Roid Mining)

Raven Navy Issue (swap out occasionally with my Drake for testing)

Iteron Mark IV (to help transport all of these new POS defenses)

So the only newly-purchased ship was the Iteron - a relatively tiny investment, even with the T2 Cargo Expanders and MWD.

Now I have my LightTraveler character training for the Orca. 20 Days for Mining Barge 5 and 11 Days for Mining Foreman 5 make up the bulk of the remaining 42 days and counting...

BTW - Who was the genius that decided these EW Batteries would by 4,000 m3? Turns a handful of transport trips into a 3 hour affair!!!

WAIT, you say! You cannot online all of these! A Medium POS cannot take the load! Well, some clever folks over at the Planet Risk Show had some good angles on managing onlining/offlining the modules to apply the best force when needed. So a couple of pieces to get straight. First off, I will only be onlining the intensive array when I am ready to batch refine. This alone allows me to keep everythng else except one small turret online, and dramatically reduces (Heavy Water) fuel consumption. When I am batch refining, I can take selected turrets or other components offline (ex: 2 Medium Turrets and 1 Small Turret). Once refining is completed, I can online them again. Per Quiv's comment below, I can also choose to keep the guns offline until I get attacked, but I might start with keeping them onlined - I kind of like the deterrent to even firing a single salvo when I am AFK.

*** Oh Yes, a Refining Array - I am finally skilled up on Gas Harvesting Skill Level 5 and Mining and Refining Skills all to Level 4 or better. Based on feedback, you should really only consider the Medium Intensive Refinery for the higher refining yield. Combined with skilling up your ore-specific refining skills, you can make the most of your rock (and gas) grinding.

The idea being to make it as frustrating and risky as possible - (a) ECM Jammers to eliminate AFK attackers and then (b) Make it painful for small gangs via Statis Webbers and Small Artillery for turret tracking fast frigates, Warp Disruptors to minimize warp-outs for repair, and Medium Batteries for larger ships.

Certainly a long way from indestructible, but with proper exit management in Class 2 systems, I find it hard to believe I will see much action on my POS. The only real issue remains if another POS goes up in the system with lots of pilots.

Placements - The idea is to place in balanced locations by type, but spread by types such that there is no single grouping of multiple systems. You are looking for the "Max Spines" look, as it looks more menacing IMHO.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

I returned from vacation and decided that before I looked for the next Class 2 WH, I would run out to the handful of stations where I had staged my as-yet unsold sleeper loot. This was loot that I dropped into stations when a market hub was not within a reasonable number of jumps at the time or the market hub prices were not acceptable to me at the time. If you recall from an earlier post on Selling your WH Salvage Wisely, I do not like to maintain large caches of riches in the POS, so I regularly take it directly to market or stage it in an exit system. Regardless, I found myself with a little over 2B ISK worth of sleeper loot scattered in 3 different stations, roughly 50 jumps total to round it all up.

The good thing about sleeper loot...is that it is LIGHTWEIGHT. A single NIM is a paltry 0.01 m3, which is consistent with most of the sleeper loot types. The "Wrecked xxxxxx" and "Malfunctioning xxxxx" components are also relatively small at 10.0 m3 a piece. That means even my Covops ship can easily carry all of the truly valuable loot, which means I typically make it safely though low-sec and can even skip through most gatecamps.

If you are capable of flying a Covert Ops ship with a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II, you have a safe alternative to traditional haulers for sleeper loot when running to market...

Fly Safe!

P.S. The Great Seattle Meltdown, which I luckily missed while on vacation, is beginning to taper off. Good to be home! Back to WH Operations!